What the Dickens!

Laptop problems a couple of weekends ago led to me actually settling down to read a book- Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, to be precise.  Dickens has a wonderful way of describing what life was like for the Victorian poor, of describing what it was like to scrape a living in any way you could.  Even those with what we would think of as decent office jobs were often still despearately poor and at the mercy of their masters- Bob Cratchit, for example.  Being able to save up for the future was as much of an impossible dream as it is for many today, with every penny needed to pay the rent and keep the household fed, clothed and warm.  A single incident outside a person's control- illness, a rise in prices, loosing your job- could drop an entire family from 'getting on all right' into poverty at a moment's notice, and there was no safety net of the welfare state. 

Any of that sound familiar?  It did to me.  As I was reading I kept thinking how little some things have changed.  Low paid employees (the retail and service sector today as much as office and manufacturing) are still at the mercy of their employees, particularly temporary or part time workers.  Often rules supposedly imposed for the good of employees aren't enforced- even the minimum wage- as employers today complain about employee rights stifling business growth.  Well, call me a radical, but I can't help but think that if you can't afford to pay decent wages to your employees and treat them as human beings rather than robots, your business probably has other problems.  With plans afoot to refuse legal aid for employment matters the situation isn't likely to get much better.  Perhaps we need reminding why some of these laws were brought in.

While reading I kept wondering what Dickens would have written about had he been writing today.  Would Fagin's gang have been drug dealers in inner city estates?  What would he have had to say about Coketown's post-industrial decline?  Would Paris be replaced in A Tale of Two cities by Tripoli, or Kabul, or Cairo?

One thing he wouldn't have had to change is the unpleasant portrayal of bankers and money-lenders.  Nicholas Nickleby even has a cameo by a corrupt MP!  Unfortunately some things do not change.  But sometimes I think we find it hard to accept how little change has been made in some areas.   We can accept poverty in past, or far away in Africa.  But the statistics that show how many children in this country, in 2011 are living in poverty are too hard to handle.  We categorise all those without jobs, for whatever reason, as 'lazy dole scum' and think that all those who are homeless are to blame for their plight. 

But today, like in the nineteenth century, it can take very little for a seemingly comfortable family- or individual*- to find themselves in real difficulty- for food, for heating (a BBC report last week said that a fifth of households in Britain are affected by fuel poverty, and costs are still rising) and for accommodation.  Selling off council houses was great for the families that could buy them, but no so great for their children who now have little access to affordable housing.

This wasn't intended as rant, merely a reflection on what a modern Dickens would be writing about today. I  wonder if there is anyone writing with the same knowledge and ability to evoke the world of the poor as completely as he did?  Given our cynicism today it would be quite a challenge to make critics understand what that world is really like, and to stop them in their calls to tear apart the safety net of the welfare state.

Unfortunately, whereas Dickens' characters all seem to end up at least comfortably off- due to mysterious benefactors,  jovial philanthropists, rich relations' wills or just hard work and good luck; many people today are still hoping, like Mr Micawber in David Copperfield,  for something to turn up. 
 
Personally, I would love bump into some benevolent benefactor in the street, who would decide to give me a good job and ensure the people around me got the help and security they need.  Unfortunately that's still in the realm of fiction. 



* Individuals are actually often worse off.  Without legal dependents, and still classed as 'young,' if I were to loose my job and accommodation I'd be a very low priority for help from the overstretched local authority.  And to anyone who says that's what housing benefit is for, that really only covers rent (for a single room) if you're lucky.  Deposits, bills etc are another matter.  Not to mention getting a landlord who's willing to take you.

Emotional immigration

I have very little right to speak (or write) about immigration.  I grew up in a part of the country where non-British born people and non-white people were practically non-existent. Perhaps my own views are coloured by that, although they are in fact different to those prevailing in my home county.  Then I moved to York, again predominantly white, although with a sizable Asian population (mostly Chinese).  But my friends over the years have included people from Finland to Japan, the Netherlands to the USA, and friends and acquaintances of mine have themselves gone to live and work in Japan, Bangladesh and Denmark.

David Cameron has once more waded in to the debate to say he is in favour of 'good' immigration (although exactly what that is is still unclear to me, but perhaps that's just me missing the point).  It disappointed me that he was still lumping together economic migrants, asylum seekers and other forms of migration together in one speech, without seeming to acknowledge the differences between coming here in search of money or education; and being forced to flee your homeland because of violence or persecution.  I'm sure he's aware of those differences personally- at least I hope so- but to lump them together as 'immigrants' (which to many people in Britain is a negative term) in his speech helps confuse the debate.

But another question has been interesting me recently, ever since a debate I saw about Europe with UKIP's Nigel Farage, when he refused to acknowledge that for some people questions of nationalism have emotional elements.  I don't think that feeling emotionally attached to your country, or your currency, or your history and traditions, is wrong.  It can be wrong if you let things that are unjust (eg not giving women the vote can be defended on grounds of 'tradition') continue on that basis alone, but the sentiment itself isn't necessarily bad.

I think there is a similar emotional element to immigration.  And this has been influenced by the media and by our fears.  If someone says the word 'immigrant' you probably think of someone from Pakistan or India, or perhaps the stereotypical Polish Plumber.  Most of the criticism seems to be aimed at them.  And so Cameron's speech made me wonder.  What would our reaction have been if all (or most) of the thousands of people coming to Britain each year were French?  Or Italian?  Or from Canada, or Australia?
  
They would equally be immigrants, equally 'coming over here taking our jobs and our houses and our healthcare'.  But I'm not sure we'd see such vitriolic attacks in the media.  I can't quite picture youths in balaclavas painting 'Frogs go home' on the wall of a French restaurant.  And that leaves me wondering why.  Is it because these are countries we see as our equals, in terms of wealth and international influence?  Is it because they are predominantly white?  (although so, of course, is Eastern Europe).  Is it because we think we understand their culture, that it's not so different to ours, even if the language is? 

I don't know.  But I think it's an interesting question.  This debate isn't just about numbers and facts, it's about people's perceptions and emotions.  As I started by hinting, even in my white, rural English childhood home local people dislike immigrants.  Probably because they don't know any.  If they did, they might realise that there are people, individual stories, behind the numbers, and the question is not as simple as it sounds. 

Reflections on 'the outsider'

I love my local library.  (Yes, we still have a library, although before long it won't have any staff.)  There was an exhibition there recently about York's refugee committe in the early to mid 20th century.  It was fascinating reading about the help given to refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany in the 1930's, about factory workers who couldn't have been paid all that much themselves contributing a few pence a week to pay for a child evacuated from Germany to be cared for and educated.

It made me wonder whether society's reaction today would be towards a similar crisis.  So often refugees, asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and legal migrant workers are all lumped together by the tabloid press as a seething mass of people 'coming over here taking our jobs and our houses and using our services.'   It can be hard to separate the different groups and the different issues.

Today, those who come here seeking safety from persecution or violence in their homelands face many difficulties once they manage to get here, from official forms and interviews to surviving on meagre resources in a land where they may not speak the language or know anyone, and where often the public are unwelcoming.  Despite the coalition government's pledge to end child detention for asylum seekers, too little has been done so far.  I wonder what the factory workers who helped pay for German children's keep would make of Yarl's Wood detention centre?

But one thing that encourages me when I read stories about refugees and asylum seekers is how often a church is involved, how often it is church members leading the fight against deportation for families and individuals who have been failed by the system. 

All through the Old Testament God encourages his people to care for the 'outsiders' living amongst them.  Although it's easy to loose sight of this amongst the passages commanding his people not to intermarry with the surrounding tribes (in an attempt to stop them drifting into worshipping the false gods of those tribes) there were always non-Israelites living amongst God's people.  Some, like the Moabite woman Ruth, even became ancestors of King David and ultimately of Jesus Christ.  Jesus himself showed his concern for those who were considered 'outsiders' in his society.  So it seems to me only right that the church should be active on behalf of those 'outsiders' to our society.

After all, if you had to leave Britain and ended up in a strange country, with no friends, little money and without knowing the language, wouldn't you hope someone would help you?